2 Timothy 4:1-5 (NIV) In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
Acts 20:25-31 (NIV)“Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. 26 Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. 28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
At times it seems I'm writing a lot more, 'watch out for this craziness', and a lot less, 'amen to that brother/sister'. The pessimist would say that there's more crazy floating around right now than wisdom, what choice have I? The optimist would be sad that the crazy floats to the top and gets more visibility. So when a story or article comes up that deserves our attention for speaking the truth, I'm happy to both read it for myself and comment upon it for others.
In recent years I have taken John Piper to task when he whitewashed the slave owning of Jonathan Edwards {The troubling whitewashing of Jonathan Edwards' ownership of slaves by John Piper} or when the President of his seminary went after Empathy as a Sin with Piper's support {The folly of the "Sin of Empathy" - A self-inflicted wound to Christian Fundamentalism}, and I cannot walk with him on his road of strict Complementarianism, although I was raised with this view and understand its argumentation. However, the conviction offered up on this short interview is both timely, powerful, and biblical.
I've been preaching and leading Bible studies this way my whole life for good reason. The pastor who mentored me as I grew up in his church, Pastor James Frank of Galilee Baptist Church in Saranac, Michigan, was a verse-by-verse exegetical preacher. Uncomfortable verses? Can't skip them when you're working your way through the text one phrase and sentence at a time. Selective topic choices? That's not in your hands, when you preach this way you speak on each topic as often as the Word of God chooses to do so.
Pastor and author John Piper says too many of today's pastors are ignoring certain texts and topics within Scripture out of fear of being given a political label they reject.
Piper, the former pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and the founder of DesiringGod.org, urged pastors at the Together for the Gospel conference in Louisville, Ky., this month to be "radically committed" to preaching all of Scripture, no matter the subject.
There are plenty of uncomfortable passages depending upon the church that you as a pastor have been called to serve. And in case you're wondering, there are uncomfortable passages depending upon the failures and temptations that have, or still do, cause you particular grief as a sinner saved by grace called to shepherd God's people. Avoid the hard ones? Skip the ones that might make things difficult? If you're the one choosing a topic each week and choosing the scripture you want to use to support it, the opportunity to pick/choose looms large. I know that some people preach powerfully and biblically using a topical model, I myself believe that working your way verse-by-verse through the Scriptures offers a discipline and a guardrail that benefits both preacher and hearer alike.
I sympathize entirely with men and women in vocational ministry who fear for their job and worry about their family should things go sour. As an American Baptist minister my employment is at-will. The church's members of churches like mine could (by-laws vary on the fraction needed: 2/3, 3/4) vote at any point to end our season at the church and send us packing. For many of my brothers and sisters serving in this employment model, that can become a heavy weight to carry.
My wife and I spent the first half of our marriage (to this point) living paycheck to paycheck, putting things on a credit card so we could pay the electricity and the mortgage. Now that I'm a father, with a daughter who loves her hometown, her school, and her friends, I can't imagine how I'd explain that we have to leave Franklin because dad told the congregation something they didn't want to hear and they voted him out. It is because my congregation has given me no reason to believe in my 10+ years here that they want honey dripped in their ears that I can write freely about my brothers and sisters in ministry who tread upon thin ice. If a congregation won't listen to the Word of God, they need to be challenged by it, if they reject it from the one called to shepherd them, they need to be broken by a spirit of repentance. To skirt the issues and hope for the best is not a solution. Healthy churches don't function this way. For the sake of long-term ministry viability, some pastors are better off preaching the Truth, getting fired, and moving on to a church that is more concerned with what God has to say that hearing what they already believe reinforced.
Before continuing to interact with Piper's words, a reminder: There's a right way and a wrong way to approach any topic in preaching and teaching. Discernment, humility, patience, and the like can go a long way toward bridging a gap between a preacher and his/her congregation on a topic, and tactlessness, arrogance, and a hot temper can turn even a minor difficulty into a full-blown crisis. In other words, if you're being a jerk it may not be God's Word they've got a problem with.
"Some pastors are so fearful of being labeled conservative, or fundamentalist, or progressive, or woke – or whatever the circles you care about [and] would look down upon – that they're going to avoid any kind of biblical command that would put them in some camp that they don't want to be part of," Piper said.
He then provided examples.
Given the climate you can see why numerous pastors are afraid. The faculty of Grove City College just learned how dangerous even an anonymous charge (that turned out to have no real evidence) of being 'woke' can do, and how people they trusted can turn on them when such a politically charged bomb is being thrown.
I know that some pastors embrace being on the Red Team or the Blue Team, they proudly wave that flag. Yet, as Pastor Piper is reminding us here, those who thump their chest the most about which team they are on would be the most fearful of having people think that they, gasp, have switched sides. That pastors shouldn't be on political teams in the first place is a topic I've hammered at (going against the tide) for years, this is another danger that reminds us why: it corrupts your ability to offer Truth when your team embraces a lie. {The Myth of a Christian Nation - by Gregory Boyd: a summary and response or for a whole lot of depth, my six hour seminar: The Church and Politics}
"[They're] just not going to deal with racial discrimination, because they're going to get called 'woke,'" he said. "They're not going to deal with modesty or nudity in movies because they're going to get called 'fundamentalist.' They're not going to deal with the fact that we are citizens of heaven before we're citizens of America because they're going to get called 'unpatriotic.'"
Pastors should never be held "bondage to the opinions of others," Piper said. Instead, they should follow the model of Jesus, who did not care about anybody's opinion, Piper added.
In 2020 I was told (from outside my own congregation) that writing about racial reconciliation and the need for COVID-19 precautions was damaging my reputation/witness. Except both of these truths were based upon the combination of factual evidence and biblical principles. I love the people who offered to me that advice, because they thought they were saving me from myself, but I cannot agree with the assessment. I may have on occasion not articulated myself in the best manner, but how could I pretend that God's Word offered nothing on either topic when our whole nation was talking of little else? To offer truth without being political about it was no small task {since pundits have a $ interest in making everything political}, and I did my best with that self-imposed limitation, but my congregation and community needed leadership in both areas, if not for things such as this, why am I here?
I would add that in addition to not avoiding political hot button topics, a pastor must also be aware of his/her own biases and work to ensure that the way in which difficult topics are addressed reflects the text of scripture not our own personal beliefs on the subjects. If you preach the 'whole counsel of God' but only from a Libertarian, Socialist, Fundamentalist, or Progressive viewpoint, thus explaining away or twisting the portions of Scripture that contradict and refute those viewpoints {And believe me, every human created political or philosophical viewpoint is in conflict with Scripture at some point, often many points}, you haven't given your congregation the Word of God, you've given them what you think the Word of God should say, a BIG difference.
James 3:1 (NIV) Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
"Don't you want to be free like that?" Piper asked.
This is the part of what Piper has to say that warms my heart. There is tremendous freedom when you open God's Word and ask it to mold and shape you rather than trying to wrangle it to fit your desires. For one thing, wrestling against God is a fools errand, you're not going to win. For another, it elevates us above the petty, personal, transitory, and self-interested positions and policies that infect contemporary discussions of the issues. Having a historical perspective is another big help, but nothing can compare with being able to say to yourself, "God wrote this, it has served the Church for two thousand years, my task is to simply walk the path laid before me."
Additionally, pastors should be "so radically committed" to "all that the Bible teaches" that "just when people think they have you pegged, and in some camp, you bring something out of your Bible treasure that just throws them totally off balance."
I've surprised people over the years. A number of those who knew the teenage version of me shake their heads when they hear or read what the version of me that God has been working on since has to say. That hurts, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't, but my oath is to follow where God is leading, even if it puts distance between myself and friends, colleagues, even family. Several years ago I wrote on a difficult topic, one that upset someone here in Franklin that up until that point thought, "I really like what this guy has to say", and while I always reserve the right to have been in error about something, I was writing according to my best understanding of what God's Word has to say on the subject. Thankfully, after some productive back and forth, and even a few edits for clarity after talking to people about how my initial wording was received, we came to an understanding and were able to move forward knowing that we're both serving the Kingdom of God as best we are able. Not every 'confrontation' with a congregant, community member, or especially social media commentor, on a difficult topic will end well, in fact most probably won't. The call to speak the Truth in Love remains.
"You've got to displease everybody sometimes, or you're probably not getting it right," Piper said. "... Bible people will love you for that. Partisan people who are more Republican or more Democrat than Christian, they won't love you for that. [But] you don't want them to love you. You want them to be converted."
Amen to that.
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